Total Pageviews

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Islands in the Clouds…The Tepuis of Venezuela

Photo by Imarú Baquero

The word for tepui means "home of the gods" in the
native tongue of the Pemon, the indigenous people who inhabit the Gran Sabana.
Tepuis range in height from approximately 3000 to 10,000 feet and often are
precarious or, as yet, impossible to explore.. They are what remains of a great
prehistoric sandstone plateau, formed from the monadnocks that survived its
collapse. In essence, they are pillar-mountains, and they are 115 in number,
situated in the Guiana Highlands, mostly in Venezuela.

Biologically, these mountain towers are an oasis in time
because they have been isolated from the rest of nature by their altitude. Much
of the flora and fauna found on them is unique, and exists nowhere else on earth. For example, there is a frog that can neither hop nor swim, and which
has opposable toes which help it cling to slippery rock surfaces. Tepuis seem
often to have large numbers of carnivorous plants since these thrive in poor nutrient
environments. Tepuis are home to the highest waterfall in the world, Angel
Falls, and the deepestquartzite
cave.Some are covered in deep fog
perpetually and have only been photographed with radar.Because of the extreme difficulty of making
landfall, many tepui have never been explored.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The great Scottish author, Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, whose most well known works are the Sherlock Holmes series, was
inspired by these wonders of nature to write his famous book, “The Lost World”. It is about the possibility of discovering an isolated remote area
where prehistoric plants and animals, including dinosaurs, still exist. .The
unexpected survival of ancient animals has been shown to be possible, in at
least a few cases. For instance the coelacanth, a 6 foot long prehistoric fish,
was thought to have been extinct for 70 million years, but has been caught by fisherman more than once, in South Africa
in 1938 and inSulawesi in 1988.

The Coelacanth is a very interesting fish and deserves
special mention. It is the only living creature to have a fully functional
intracranial joint, which is to say a division separating the ear and brain
from the nasal organs and eye. This allows the front part of the head to be
lifted when the fish is feeding. It also has paired fins which move in a
similar fashion to our arms and legs. It appears to be able to detect
electrical currents by means of an organ in its head. It is either blue or
brown in color with speckles and has been videotaped recently. The Coelacanth
has survived for some 360 million years.

We Europeans could learn a thing or two from this fish. Let us not only survive too but remain who we are as well, and never lose our spirit of exploration and adventure.